It is not good to be of the city folk. Of this I am convinced.
There is something in the mode of life that breeds an alarming
condition of blindness and deafness, or so it seems with the city
folk that come to my poppy field. Of the many to whom I have talked
ethically not one has been found who ever saw the warnings so
conspicuously displayed, while of those called out to from the porch,
possibly one in fifty has heard. Also, I have discovered that the
relation of city folk to country flowers is quite analogous to that
of a starving man to food. No more than the starving man realizes
that five pounds of meat is not so good as an ounce, do they realize
that five hundred poppies crushed and bunched are less beautiful than
two or three in a free cluster, where the green leaves and golden
bowls may expand to their full loveliness.
Less forgivable than the unaesthetic are the mercenary. Hordes of
young rascals plunder me and rob the future that they may stand on
street corners and retail "California poppies, only five cents a
bunch!" In spite of my precautions some of them made a dollar a day
out of my field.
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